Why Smart Home Interoperability Matters

written by Sujata Neidig

I recently spoke on an interesting panel about smart home interoperability at Parks Associates' ?CONNECTIONS conference in May. The questions were compelling, and we covered a lot of ground – but I still have more to say.

When it comes to the smart home, interoperability means different things to different groups. Consumers want choice, flexibility, simple setup and peace of mind that they won’t get hacked. And maybe more than anything, they want their devices to “just work”.

Product manufacturers want to address the largest market possible with a platform approach. They don’t want separate SKUs for each partner. They want to reduce resource costs. The IoT industry wants convergence and coexistence of technologies. This is the fuel needed to accelerate the market. Multiple competing technologies and a fragmented market hinders, not helps, this growth.

Implement Interoperability Standards

What's best for consumers drives adoption and that drives growth. Period.

Do you recall the expression “a rising tide lifts all boats”? Standards raise the tide by increasing the market size. That’s what all device makers want.

For example, prior to the Matter standard, device makers had to build for one partner at a time or build an entire stack solution themselves. With Matter, they can invest in building one platform to support multiple partners. And because consumers can connect their smart home device to any system or platform that supports Matter, there are already millions (and growing) of Matter enabled smart devices in homes today which creates a larger market for device manufacturers to target.

Standards can be growth-multipliers.

Some view the adoption of standards and the ability to create differentiated features as a trade-off situation. In reality, standards are multipliers. They address the ‘’plumbing’’ needed to make things simple, reliable and usable by all. Differentiation is built on top of this foundation.

Matter is a smart home protocol that standardizes how devices communicate with each other. This standardization brings compatibility and interoperability to devices across brands and all the major smart home platforms that control those devices. Device makers can then focus their resources and investment to innovate and create differentiating experiences that bring value to their users.

Interoperability provides a foundation for services.

Interoperable smart home devices – across brands and platforms – provide a foundation on which to build services. This is true for the DIY market as well as service providers. When there is a level of interoperability, more devices can connect and communicate with each other – and deliver meaningful, comprehensive data on the local network. Companies can use this data to build services such as security, energy management or elder care – delivering real value with a real impact.

How Device Makers Can Differentiate

Inevitably, questions arise about how device makers can differentiate while working within standards. The answer is to differentiate in how the user engages with their smart home. More connected devices mean more data – and that can be used to deliver an intelligent and autonomous home experience.

Here’s an example: At CES 2024, NXP showcased an autonomous home experience demonstration using Matter as the foundation of interoperable smart devices and building on that foundation to deliver personalization. We implemented the personalization experience by using an Ultra-Wideband (UWB)-enabled smartphone. The smart home identified who entered the door based on the smartphone and adjusted the lighting, window shades and thermostat settings to that person’s preference. Regarding the autonomous home, this demo employed sensors and learning algorithms using AI/ML to create a smart thermostat that analyzes the environment, reacts to patterns, and adjusts power consumption to save energy.

Do standards create opportunities for low-cost commodity devices? Sure. But that’s not a bad thing because it opens the market for companies to enter and bring new innovative products to the market, widening the appeal of a Matter compatible smart home system. Do they limit your ability to differentiate? Absolutely not. If you need any evidence of this, just look at what Bluetooth? did in the audio industry. Can I get a $10 pair of wireless headphones? Definitely! But that has not limited the opportunities for Sony?, or Bose?, or Apple? to make high demand, differentiated products built on standards.

Challenges to Achieving Interoperability

Cost

A top question and concern with interoperability is added cost. I would flip this around and ask how expensive it is to NOT deliver on interoperability. Consumers get frustrated when things don’t work or are difficult to set up and use. Then they write bad reviews and stop buying devices from that brand all of which inevitably impacts the device or service company's brand.

There's also a high cost of using proprietary technologies. These technologies require a higher investment to maintain, support and evolve with industry trends. With standards that bring interoperability, companies can tap into an industry collective of resources to address industry challenges. Yes, there are costs associated with implementation and certification of standards. But there is an overall lower total cost of ownership because you remove the additional costs of creating multiple SKUs for each smart home platform and for maintaining proprietary technologies.

Standards vs. design flexibility

Tapping into my personal experience at the board-level with Thread Group since its formation, and with the Connectivity Standards Alliance since 2018, I’ve seen firsthand that these are member-driven organizations that develop standards based on market needs and member inputs. These organizations have global representations from companies across the value chain who provide their unique perspectives on market needs and business challenges. CSA and Thread Group have processes and procedures in place to drive consensus-based decisions. When companies get involved in standards organizations or work with partners such as NXP who are heavily involved, the result is standards that benefit individual companies and the entire industry.

Transition path to new standard and coexistence with other standards

When new standards are introduced, there is the obvious challenge of how companies navigate a transition path to a new standard while coexisting with existing products and portfolios that most likely use other standards or proprietary technologies. In regard to Matter, there are a couple of key points on how this is being addressed:

• Matter and Thread come with open-source implementations, giving developers more tools in their toolbox because they come with communities who are deploying technology, not just writing specs.
• Matter understood this challenge and addressed it from the beginning by including bridges in the device types and functions supported at time of launch. A Matter Bridge allows non-Internet Protocol (IP) based devices to be part of a Matter smart home system.

With our decades of experience and breadth and depth of portfolio for the IoT market, NXP is your trusted partner to navigate this transition path with. We have a complete portfolio of to address the range of device types from sensors to gateways. We look at requirements at the system level on implementing Matter and then building innovative experiences on top of Matter – connectivity, processing, security and IoT technology enablement such as local voice control, AI/ML and rich user interfaces. Learn more about our Matter solutions.

Delivering on the Promise of Interoperability

So, what shows the most promise in advancing smart home interoperability? Matter is a connectivity protocol that I believe will unlock significant opportunities for innovations in edge computing. Matter is backed by all of the major smart home platform providers. This is big! It's also based on modern and proven technologies like IP, which brings flexibility and efficiency in convergence and coexistence with other technologies. For example, Matter defines the application – the common language for smart devices to speak to each other and uses existing technologies for how they connect to each other – Thread for low-power mesh needs and Wi-Fi for high bandwidth use cases. Matter also uses proven security standards to implement its secure provisioning and device attestation process.

With Matter delivering on interoperability, addressing global trends for energy management / sustainability, secure networks and more becomes possible. As a system-level semiconductor company and industry collaborator, NXP has IoT technologies such as AI/ML, UWB and proximity ranging that can be built on Matter to move the smart home to a truly intelligent home. And, NXP has established the Smart Home Innovation Lab in Austin to collaboratively work with partners and customers to anticipate and resolve complex smart home challenges with breakthrough innovative solutions and smart edge technologies.

Looking Forward

What we see in the industry now is just the beginning. As the adoption of Matter grows into devices and the home network infrastructure, and as Matter expands its breadth of device types and capabilities, there’s a lot to be excited about – for consumers and the industry overall.

Keep the Conversation Going

Connect with Sujata Neidig on LinkedIn and share your thoughts on this subject. We welcome the conversation.

Author | Sujata Neidig

Sujata Neidig has over 30 years of experience in the semiconductor industry and is currently Director of Marketing for Wireless Connectivity where she drives product marketing and standards efforts for IoT connectivity. She also represents NXP on the Thread Group and Connectivity Standards Alliance’s Board of Directors as well as serving as Thread Group’s VP of Marketing. She is based in Austin, TX.